The man who announced to Tamil world Apollo-11’s Moon landing

TNN | Jul 29, 2019, 07.48 AM IST

CHENNAI: Hours before Apollo 11 landed on the moon, V Nallathambi knew the sequence of the mission by heart. He was not a scientist, but he was perhaps the only Indian link to the historic event that took place 50 years ago on July 20, 1969.

The then 33-year-old from Madras, Nallathambi was an announcer with Voice of America radio in Washington DC, who had the chance to watch live, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the moon, on TV. His job was to bring those scenes alive through his extempore speech in Tamil.

It was 2.56am in Washington DC and 12.24pm in Madras. “I still vividly remember when Neil Armstrong stepped out of the module and announced, ‘the eagle has landed’. I was watching it live on one of the television sets that was given to the radio station. There was a lot of dust when they landed. Ninteen minutes later Buzz Aldrin stepped out. Armstrong also spoke to the then President Richard Nixon. My job was to watch and give live commentary,” he recalls.

People in India could then tune to Voice of America, which aired programmes from Washington DC in Tamil and Hindi through a transmitter in Sri Lanka.

A day before the event, a standard size television set was installed at the studio. It was a time, Madras barely knew about television. Nallathambi watched history unfold through live transmission from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

At that time India’s space initiative was in its nascent stage. A month after US landed on the moon in what was seen as a Cold War space race, Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) was formed on August 15, 1969. “When people in the US were still thinking the landing was a hoax, to me it was a greatest achievement,” says Nallathambi.

The choice of having Nallathambi to cover the historic landing was made after his bosses lauded his coverage of the death of the then chief minister of Madras state C N Annadurai. “I was perhaps the only person allowed to cover the event live from the terrace of the US Consulate in Madras,” he said. “So, when my bosses were asked who would they recommend to cover Apollo 11 landing, they said ‘he’s the latest guy here, he can do it’.”

“There was a news item about it every day. I must have mentioned ‘Kennedy Space Centre’, at least a hundred times. This made me somehow want to visit the Centre in my lifetime,” he said. But Nallathambi returned home and retired as assistant station director with Doordarshan Kendra, Chennai in 1994.

As the world celebrated 50 years of Apollo 11, Nallathambi finally got a chance to visit Kennedy Space Centre on July 20, 2019. “I visited the centre with my grandchildren. Told them how I covered the event,” he smiles.